Creating Variables in Eprime

[Michiel Spape]

Hi David & David,
I agree, DavicMcF, that some people seem to write to this list as if we're actually PST support*, just throwing the questions with little regards to introductions and so on. Some people might like to know we're not paid by PST. Yet, I do not believe this question, like you responded to the last one, is beyond you (concerning exitvaluesamples).

Anyway, David McC,
You might try a bit more reading and working on tutorials, such as the amazing E-Primer (http://www.cognitology.eu/pubs/AnE-Primer2009.pdf) offers, as your language seems to suggest you're not quite aware of how best to structure your experiment in E-Prime. It is, and I don't mean this as patronising as it may sound, a bit like someone going to the MSOffice support forum and asking "I want to write a thriller novel, how do I insert a character into my storyline?" (perhaps hoping for a Sherlock Holmes wizard).
So yes, you can do with E-Prime what you want, but A: I'm not exactly clear what you want (you mean, a normal variable, attribute, or type?) and B: it'll probably be easier if you work without lots of script.
A1: (Var) Press Alt+5 twice to bring up the user script (user tab), and bring in your global variables! Such as "Dim WordOneWasPresented as string", writing in a little inline in your experiment that assigns "left" and "right" to WordOneWasPresented - WordOneWasPresented="left" for example. You could do it like that.
A2. (Attribute) Just add attributes to the first list - all sublists should have access to it.
A3. (Type) You can create new objects in E-Prime, from the documentation:@
Sub Main()				
	Dim a As Object		
	Dim b As Object		
	Set a = CreateObject("phantom.application)		
	Set b = a								
	Set a = Nothing											
End Sub			
How cool is that? But if you mean something like this, I'm with DavidMcF - try to official support. If you want this heavy programming, I'd suggest C#

B1. Well, you could just store your words in, say, a 2-dimensional Array,
Dim TheWords(3,2) as string
TheWords(1,1) = "oneword"
TheWords(2,1) = "twoword"
TheWords(3,1) = "threeword"
And, upon presentation, you just make the list remember where you presented it. Let's say you have an attribute "WordLoc" that encodes where the current word is presented:
If "WordLoc" = "left" then TheWords(1,2) = "left" else TheWords(1,2) = "right"

Right, something like that? Forgive me if I have been giving sloppy instructions, rather than a good step-by-step guide, but I don't know exactly what you want and b, I have to do some work myself sometimes.
Best,
Mich

* note, upon re-reading this, it sounds a bit as if I accuse DmcF of being fed up with ill-defined and introduction-less questions - I do not mean that.

Michiel Spapé
Research Fellow
Perception & Action group
University of Nottingham
School of Psychology


-----Original Message-----
From: e-prime at googlegroups.com [mailto:e-prime at googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of David McFarlane
Sent: 27 October 2009 15:09
To: e-prime at googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Creating Variables in Eprime


Just so you know, PST Web Support likes to take these sorts of 
questions at http://support.pstnet.com/e%2Dprime/support/login.asp 
.  They promise response times of 24-48 hours to all requests, so you 
might do better there than here.  And if you feel charitable you may 
then post the answer back here for the sake of others.

At 10/27/2009 09:55 AM Tuesday, David McCoy wrote:
>I am programming an experiment that presents a word to the left or
>right during an encoding phase. After about 40 or so of these words
>being presented there is a retrieval phase where the subject sees
>either the same words or new words presented in the center of the
>screen. A dot appears on the left or right of the word and the subject
>responds to it.
>
>-I need to find a way to create a variable during the encoding phase
>that will 'memorize' if a certain word is presented to the left or
>right so that during the retrieval phase it can call it. For example,
>when I analyze the data I need to filter the setting in the Edat file
>so that I can look at the RT time for a dot that appears congruently
>(dot on same side as encoding word), incongruently (dot on opposite
>side as encoding word) and neutral.)
>
>Is there a way of making a global variable that can input which side a
>word is presented? So that words encoded on the left can be poured
>into an attribute, encoding words on the right into another and from
>there I can call those attributes in the retrieval phase?




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